Rally Racing

I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me. But… here I am, in the flesh, writing to you once again. Here’s what you missed: »Closing out 2016, we lost a lot of time at Friday night LSPR and led Saturday. However, the amount we led Saturday only made…

Ever tried to understand rally pace notes? That weird language a codriver reads to a driver during a rally race? This video from Team Oneil Rally school is your chance. Not only do they go through the basics of pace notes, but they also get into modifying your notes and more…

1997 saw a lot of changes for the World Rally Championship. A new top specification called World Rally Cars were introduced and manufacturers could choose between the existing Group A rules or the new World Rally Car rules which no longer required road going versions of the race car. Only…

Every November, Bancroft, Ontario plays host to the Rally of the Tall Pines. One of the most significant events in the Canadian Rally Championship calendar. This year featured particularly rough conditions for the November 26th race. Melting snow and repeated freeze-thaw cycles turned the roads into a slushy, muddy disaster.…

Earlier on in the year Volkswagen shocked the motorsport world by pulling the plug on two very big projects. And whereas Audi’s departure, while premature, was very expected, the decision to end the VW WRC team was a shock to everyone. Seemingly overnight three of the most prominent drivers expected…

Want to see if you can follow pace notes? Here’s you chance(video below). You can clearly see the road and the notes are easy to hear. The number after the Left or Right is the degree of the corner. It sounds like they’re using a 1-10 scale (normal Jemba notes…

Ojibwe happened really fast. Normally, I remember a lot about each rally, but that is not the case. A quick test on Wednesday, 2 pass recce on Thursday, rally Friday and Saturday. The test was fine. The road wasn’t super indicative of the stages that we would be racing on, even…

The relatively stock car held together at Ojibwe and they finished 3rd in class, 13th overall in the one regional and 6th in class, 18th in the other. (Regional events are simply the National two day rally broken into a separate event for each day.) The team is made up entire…

It’s been a hell of a season so far. After DNF’ing LSPR last fall, Sno*Drift was a “warm up” and the only intent was to have a clean rally. It would turn out that we would walk away from Sno* with the highest speed factor we’d see for a while,…

STPR had four B-Spec entries, but Matt Hoffman in the Sonic was just getting out of the co-driver’s seat and opted to run just the regional events. In national, that left the usual suspects, myself and the Maxxis/HRD entry with Jordan Guitar and Billy Jang. The last entry was Nitro…

Nasa Rally Sport is sanctioning five rallies in Canada next year which together are called the Extreme Elite Series. This means your Nasa Rally license will work at all five of these events: Rallye la Ville Tuque, Rallye Sanair, Rallye Saguenay, Rallye Mekinac, and Rallye Portneuf. Those rallies will also run under the…

Watch every car at Shakedown during the NASA Rally Sport 2016 Sandblast Rally. The soft, grippy, sand made the launches tough to nail, but nothing sounds better than a rally car ripping off the line. Well there is Rally Moto (yes, NASA Rally Sport let’s you race motorcycles on rally…

If you know anything about the Olympus Rally, you might know that it was a round of the first ever US rally championship, a former WRC event, and was the last rally for Group B cars. Tough. Technical. Legendary. If you’ve been following my season, you probably know that Sno*Drift…

If Oregon Trail was anything, it embodied two of rally’s favorite sayings: “hurry up and wait” and “press on regardless.” You get there, you do recce, you spend all day Friday anxiously awaiting 7pm. OTR begins on Friday night with ten miles of super specials at Portland International Raceway. Humour ensued…

During our testing for 100 Acre Wood, we found something interesting. On our third or fourth time down the test stage, we suddenly lost all power. Notably, when this happened, the temperature gauge suddenly spiked. We re-started the car, but it was still in limp mode. So we putted on…

100 Acre Wood is quickly approaching and there’s lots to do. Firstly, midterms are here for the eighteen credits I’m currently taking. I’ve also been on a weeklong hunt for my New School ID card. Today, I finally caved and purchased a new one at card services. I’d never been…

As you may or may not know, we built a 1.0L EcoBoost Fiesta rally car. It’s built for B-Spec, so performance-wise, it’s pretty much factory. My first time driving it was Wednesday. My first time racing it was Friday at Sno*Drift as part of the first round of the Rally…

SS3 and SS4 Bort getting silly speeding penalties, 1 minute and then another the next day for 5 minutes Wednesday was super high altitude racing, 11,000 plus feet. some riders passed out and crashed on stage. vogels puked twice inside his helmet, had to slow down a bunch. The next day,…

The video below is WRC ace Hayden Paddon and John Kennard at Rally Otago 2015. For those of you who don’t know Hayden, you should so her’s his racing bio: His dad, Chris was a rally driver. Haydon naturally started in karting like every other kid and didn’t compete in his first rally until 2002 at…

Rally crashes are pretty ridiculous, but mineshaft produces some of the most insane rally crashes in pro rally. There’s something about the way the road drops off down under. The drivers have to know what’s coming. There are a ton of signs. There were cautions in the notes. The driver must…

For the first time in North American rally history the organizers have allowed WRC spec studded tires. Pirelli has signed a three year supplier contract with a Canadian rally series “Championat Rallye Quebec” and will be providing the same type of tires used in the Swedish round of WRC. The tires…

I love watching the WRC, but the older cars are somehow cooler. They sound better. They shoot fire! It looks like you have to manhandle them to get them through tight corners. Basically everything from the Group B era is awesome. This is the Riviera Rally for historic rally cars…

Earlier this week Hyundai not only took the wraps of its all new WRC car, but also presented the mock-up of its upcoming Hyundai i20 R5, which is due to be homologated mid-next year. The R5 car will be very closely related to its WRC counterpart and will be tested mostly…

The E30 M3 is one of the best homologated race cars ever made. Meaning BMW built a street car to sell to customers just so it could qualify an awesome car for motorsport. This meant wins all over the world in touring car and even a few in rally despite…

I found this on Jalopnik just now and blown away. First by the flying Porsche. It’s setup for a tarmac rally meaning slammed suspension which provides very little suspension travel. Yet the driver sends it over the crest anyway. The little Porsche flies pretty good. Then I notice the spectators.…

Team O’Neil Rally School puts out some interesting rally tips on their Facebook Page. You should check out their school but if you’re not ready, you should at least follow their Facebook Page. This rally tip is about your first rally car. Many people want a vehicle with All Wheel Drive,…

Ryan Symancek is back with a video series called the The Rallyist Blog. I just watched the first episode(below) and it’s awesome. It follows him to a two day rallycross with a handful of different Subaru’s but Ryan tells it better himself: “Hi everyone! Welcome to The Rallyist Blog. Over the past…

We arrived in Marquette on Tuesday but there was a bit of a glitch and we didn’t make it to Houghton that night. We got a rental car the next morning and went straight to the test road, which was near the Herman stage. I went out with Martin Headland for…

In the world of rally nothing can be taken for granted. The challenges that competitors face on every mile make finishing an event a tremendous accomplishment; and for many, winning an event is a lifetime accomplishment. For Subaru Rally Team USA driver David Higgins and co-driver Craig Drew, what they stand poised to do is something no team…

Second win in France, first on Corsica: Latvala/Anttila victorious again on asphalt Another plus for Finnish-French relations: Latvala and Anttila’s second success of their career on asphalt was another remarkable story. At the fastest asphalt rally of all time – in Alsace in 2014 – the Volkswagen duo brought to…

Brakim Racing is Matt Brandenburg’s rally team. If you don’t know Matt check out the Team’s website or his Facebook page. The guy is awesome. He rallies a wide body E36 fitted with a ton of cool parts including a crazy fast engine prepared by VAC Motorsport. He’s also building a Lamborghini…

I know the GT3 cars are fast but I had no idea how fast they really are. The R5 is a quick little car. Not WRC spec but pretty close. I guess I expected the Porsche to be faster but didn’t realize the R4 Evo X would be faster as…

This year’s Black River Stages looks pretty awesome. There are 33 cars signed up to race ranging from VW’s to BMW’s to of course Subaru’s but there’s also a bunch of Mitsubishi’s entered. There’s even a Merkur and an old school Ford Escort!!! The best part of Black River Stages…

There are some famous corners in rally that have claimed a lot of cars. I’ve seen a lot of rally crashes. I’ve even seen cars go off and stack on top of each other. But I’m not sure I’ve seen a corner like this. Every car massively blows the corner.…

Rally is awesome. Rear wheel drive rally is even more awesome. Then there is rear wheel drive rally in Ireland kind of awesome. You seen this guy before as his videos get shared all over Facebook. His name is Frank Kelly and the man can drive. His car, “Baby Blue”, is…

Six rally spectators were killed and several others injured when a rally car spun out of control at the A Coruña rally in the north-western Spanish region of Galicia, according to the Spanish police. Four were women and one was pregnant making the situation even more unfortunate. A civil guard…

Irish Tarmac rally is awesome. Mostly because the roads are incredible. Super narrow, crazy fast, with blind jumps. The Irish drivers are even more insane. This event is part of the European Rally Championship(ERC) so its got some Euro guys in there but they allow competitors from the Irish Tarmac and…

We’ve all heard about the La Carrera Panamericana. It’s one of the most famous races in the world and back in the day was one of the most dangerous. The race is pretty different today and is run more like a stage rally than a flat out race through Mexico but…

The answer is pretty easy. Simply enter the National Rally by paying the higher entry fee(that’s all that’s required) and simply finish. Seriously that’s all you have to do. Enter the rally and drive casually to the finish and you podium, spray champagne, and a get a National trophy. Take a…

The 34th running of the Ojibwe Forests Rally (August 28-29) features approximately 147 stage miles over two days which makes it one of the longer rallies of the year. There are also two regional events(Paul Bunyan’s Ride and 10,000 Lakes Rally regional rally) which are basically the exact same thing…

The title might be a bit misleading as the swap took longer than 48 seconds… It’s a time lapse video but its pretty awesome and they performed the swap in less than three hours! The video was filmed at a parking lot service stop in Hood River, Ore. after engine trouble…

If you don’t know Brakim Racing you probably haven’t been following rally. Brakim is the rally racing team of Matt Brandenburg. Elliot Sherwood usually co-drives and Dan Thorton helps build the madness that Matt creates, including their current rally Lamborghini project. Yes, Brakim is building a Gallardo for rally racing.…

I’ve written a few articles on undestanding rally pacenotes for Jalopnik, but Hyundai WRC drivers Hayden Paddon and John Kennard are much more qualified to cover this subject. The cover the system they use, how they make the notes and why they are so effective. The numbers on the wheel are…

Pikes Peak International Hillclimb is a pretty cool event. Sure the course was ruined by RoboLoeb a few years ago but its still a pretty amazing event and makes for a pretty awesome video. In 2015, Scion returned to the famous race along with Mackin Industries, Evasive Motorsports and GReddy…

You’ve watched a million rally videos. Now, learn how to get started in rallying. How to start storming the woods in your own rally car. Team O’Neil’s Wyatt Knox and Broken Motorsports’ Bill Petrow get you started, even if you have no experience.

Episode 7 of Launch Control just aired. If you’re not familiar with the series and you like rally, but somehow missed it, you might want to call in sick to work tomorrow. You have two and half seasons to catch up on! This one covers day 1 of the New…

I’m still not clear on exactly what happened at Rally Utah that caused the event to be canceled the day before the rally started. The official press release says that there were no permits(for road closure) but implies the city was to blame for not issuing them. “Due to governmental…

Chris Atkinson, known by fans as “Atko,” might be joining the FIA World Rallycross next season! He recently teamed up with Roots Management International to explore opportunities in the growing FIA World Rallycross Championship. Which means he’s looking for sponsors and might put a program together! Chris “Atko” Atkinson is…

Are you located in the midwest and want another rally? The 2015 Show-Me Rally consist of multiple stages, utilizing the same roads that David Higgins, Ken Block and others compete on during the Rally America National Championship event known as Rally in the 100 Acre Woods. As a small regional rally, the…

A ferry that waits for nobody, breath-taking fjord scenery in Norway and a unique race. That is what you get when Aksel Lund Svindal, Norway’s downhill gold medallist, meets compatriot and Volkswagen rally driver Andreas Mikkelsen. The result was a wonderfully wild preparation for round eight of the FIA World…